Stateless (Stateless #1)

by Meli Raine

  Jason's the least of my problems now.

  I pull the bow and arrow, aiming into the night, one eye on Glen. We are at greater risk than I realized. I knew I'd spend the entire night fighting to make sure Kina stays alive.

  I didn't think the person trying to kill her would be her twin.

  Or that I'd have to pretend she wasn't.

  “Don't know. But Jason would do it in a big, obvious way. Not with a coward's sucker hit like that.” I spit on the ground, my saliva an inch from Kina's outstretched hand.

  Judi looks up at me, one of her curls escaped from the tight ponytail she normally wears. Her face stays centered but her eyes shift enough for the moonlight to reveal her thoughts.

  Kina's still breathing, steady and quiet.

  Glen notices, too.

  “Those bastards,” she says, looking through the foliage. It's August, with air that is cloyingly hot, the humidity itself like a twenty-fifth player in The Test.

  My cheek cracks with the blow that comes from behind, a half-assed hit that would make me laugh under any other scenario, but Jason breathes hard against my ear, his wrist pressed into my throat. I drop my now-useless bow and arrow.

  Ambush.

  This is an ambush.

  “CALLUM!” Judi screams as Glen picks up one of my fallen arrows and coolly examines the tip as if she's valuing a diamond, turning it over in the dim light. Spots pinpoint my vision as Jason chokes me, until I move my foot against a tree and use the thick bark to climb up, up, up, throwing my other leg over and bending at the knee to shove backward, hard. Jason stumbles, crashing into Glen, who falls under us, her whuff of pain a momentarily rewarding sound.

  Judi's knife gleams in the moonlight and comes down, hard, on Jason's shoulder, an inch from my chin. I see her arm jolt, her cry of pain cutting through the night.

  He's wearing a Kevlar vest.

  Who the hell gave him that?

  And why? Guns aren't allowed.

  Are they?

  Jason wrenches himself out from underneath me, hands back at my throat, pulling my shirt so hard, it strangles. I punch him, but it does no good. I see Glen standing face to face with Judi, both wary, Judi trying to read what Glen is doing.

  Friend or foe?

  Foe.

  “Glen,” Kina moans, the sound making Jason turn just enough for me to shove one finger up his nose and dig as hard as possible in his sinus. He snorts and growls as hot blood covers my finger, digging harder. The pressure on my throat lessens, sweet air entering my lungs.

  And then his elbow grinds into my psoas muscle, the flesh next to the inside of my hip bone spasming until I'm twisted like a pretzel. It's the kind of pain we're trained to deliver because it works.

  Oh, how it works.

  My wet fingers wrap around my waist as I try to stretch, helpless. Dissociating from the pain isn't working. We're all breathing hard, Jason's hands lethal, Judi's knife on the ground, inches from his fingers. Glen lunges and kicks it closer to him.

  “Shit,” Judi whispers, finally getting it.

  This is bloodlust. Glen was right.

  This is more than The Test.

  Glen charges her as I scramble over to Kina, who is dazed but curling upward, moving to her knees and hands, puking and hacking like her lungs are crawling up out of her windpipe. Blood drips down the side of her face and I see Jason see it, his eyes widening, his shoulders pumping up.

  He's excited by her pain.

  “Here,” she says, handing me a small, folded piece of paper. “He just has to chew.”

  I’m unsure what she means, and before I can take it, Jason is on her, Glen on Judi, and I'm nowhere.

  All that I am is Kina's shield.

  I cease to be Callum. No longer my own body, I am a series of movements. This one tries to shove her out of the way. That one knees Jason in the chin. The next rolls to the ground as I see Glen take my arrow and slam it, hard, into Judi's eye.

  Movement follows movement until an elegant dance of death comes together, choreographed by survival and appreciated by an audience of plant matter and the moon, if they can stand to watch.

  So much blood. So, so much.

  “Eeeeee!” Judi hisses, a sound not quite human, her hands going to the reed sticking out of her eye, the look like something in a movie we've been shown in training. When the fletcher made that arrow many moons ago, he never imagined it would be used to impale an eye.

  Not a human one, at least.

  Glen stands, picks up Judi's backpack, and holds it at face level, pushing hard.

  Judi collapses.

  Kina is on her belly, Jason on top of her, hands around her neck. Glen moves away from Judi's body and I grab Jason's face, fingers in his eyes as I wait and wait and wait.

  Shouldn't an alarm sound? Judi's dead. The Test is over.

  Why the hell isn't The Test over?

  Chapter 11

  Kina

  Jason smells like peppercorns and rancid cheese.

  When I can get any air through my nose.

  A grunt, a lurch to the right, and suddenly, I whoop as I inhale, the burning pain worth every drop of air I take in. In my fist, I still hold the packet with the cyanide capsule, moving my hand so the paper slips off, the slim, deadly object like a hand grenade with a pulled pin.

  My nipple screams in pain as Jason flips me over and grinds against me. I look over to see Callum against a small tree, shaking his head slowly, clearly dazed. Glen is helping him, her hands on his shoulders, one hand–no.

  I'm seeing this wrong.

  Her hands aren't on his shoulders.

  They're wrapped around his neck.

  She's not choking him, is she?

  I must be delirious.

  “Two in one night. Time to set a record,” Jason rasps as he reaches between us, undoing his belt, his erection warm against my belly as I realize he's planning to kill me and rape me at the same time. It's cold-blooded and unnecessary, a topic of conversation for years behind the scenes, the ultimate act of brutality.

  Which means the leaders will be pleased.

  Using as much abdominal power as I can, I lift up and kiss him hard, his mouth sour against mine. My tongue runs along the line between his lips, his teeth sharp as he jerks his head down in surprise, the back of mine hitting an exposed tree root.

  This kiss is so different from the ones I shared with Callum.

  Remember: Everything we do and are is neutral.

  It's the purpose that matters.

  “You like it, huh? Maybe I shouldn't do it,” he says as I realize Callum's out of my range of vision and Judi's on the ground, something poking out of her head.

  This is it. I die here.

  I reach for the capsule and put it against my lips.

  Just then, Jason's open mouth covers mine roughly, his tongue thrust in, pulling the capsule out as my eyes widen and I see it go into his mouth, his lips closing, the pill stuck to the edge of his tongue, to the right. I headbutt him as hard as I can, under the chin, throwing every ounce of myself into this one motion, one effort, one everything.

  His hands go to my throat, clawing my lip, his mouth coming back down on mine. I press my lips together, curling them in, praying his teeth crushed the capsule, knowing if his lips touch mine after the poison is released then I am dead, too.

  Then again, I was prepared for death seconds ago.

  He lifts up, up, up, his body impossibly flying off mine like an angel. He’s a demon with wings, his head hitting the nearby tree like a melon flung from a trebuchet. Callum's throwing him like a javelin, then he takes his bow and arrow and shoots exactly three arrows at Jason's convulsing body, all three in a triangle on his torso, boom boom boom.

  Pinned like an insect in a lab.

  I look up to see Glen, panting hard, next to a very dead Judi, Callum's hands in fists, arms clenched in fight mode, staring at my sister.

  And just then, an alarm sounds.

  Finally.

  It
is over.

  I am alive.

  But what just happened?

  Chapter 12

  Callum

  Glen won.

  And she was right.

  Being the killer matters.

  The way Romeo's treating her tells me so. The second I walk into the meeting he and the director, Dr. Svetnu, have called, I see it so clearly.

  I also see Glen clearly.

  Stateless trains us to strip our personalities down to the bare bones, to arteries and nerve endings, to tendons and motivation. We are nothing but vessels for autonomic training, biological beings programmed for one purpose.

  To be whatever we need to be to push our mission forward.

  Some of us, though, are more gifted in this than others.

  Being observed the entire time during The Test means the leaders know Glen killed Judi. They think I killed Jason. They know he ate cyanide but believe I gave an “enthusiastic show of force” in killing him with the poison and the head injury as well as my arrows.

  What they don't know about Kina's role is best kept silent.

  And what I know about Glen's role in trying to kill Kina is, too.

  Glen bested me. That is because I have a weakness.

  Unlike her, I have a conscience.

  The conference table is oval, six chairs evenly spaced around it. Glen is in one, Dr. Svetnu in another, Angelica and Smith next to each other, and Romeo in the final position. The only empty chair is next to Glen, so I take it.

  I can feel her smugness.

  I hope she senses my disgust.

  “Congratulations,” the good doctor says, never mincing words. I've only personally spoken to him once before, when I ran past him in the hallway a few years ago, before I had hair on my upper lip and under my arms. My clean-shaven face took some effort before this meeting, and my voice is an octave lower now.

  “You two are the top candidates. The best this training program has produced since Romeo.”

  Smith's cheek twitches but he says nothing.

  “As such, you will both be sent to university.” He slides a folder toward each of us, mine gold and blue, hers white and red. “Your acceptance letter and matriculation information is in here. As you see, you have taken a 'gap year.' You will matriculate in one year. That year will be spent in an internship.” He makes a derisive sound. “We learned from earlier classes that putting you straight into university without some easing in to mass society was not the best step.”

  We both nod.

  “You will major in whatever you choose.”

  Choose.

  “As long as it is one of the four selections on the first page,” he clarifies. “Glen, you need a major in government work. Callum, we expect you to focus on computer science. Your gap year will be in a program that has Stateless operatives woven in with regular people. After your gap year, you will live in the dormitories at your respective colleges and act as if you are from normal society.”

  He sneers at the word normal.

  In other words, we're about to be ejected into the world of the mindless masses, expected to party hard and devolve into American late adolescence. Our training movies and media consumption have given us what we need to know.

  We are chameleons. Masters of adaptation. The academic work is the least of our focus.

  Glen looks at her folder and asks, “Where are the others going?”

  “Others?”

  “There are twenty-two of us remaining. Surely more than two are attending college?”

  “Some will blend into community college programs. Others will enlist in the military. Two will be in union trade programs. Online college is a possibility for some. All have a transition time before starting. A few are assigned here.”

  “Assigned here?”

  “Someone has to clean the buildings and care for the children in the nursery,” Angelica says, eyes jumping to Glen for a split second.

  A split second is all it takes.

  I clear my throat and look at Dr. Svetnu. “Sir, may I ask what assignment Kina is receiving? After what happened in The Test, she–”

  “Why would you care?” Romeo asks sharply.

  I point to Glen. “Because Kina and Glen are identical twins. It could aid The Mission to have Kina trained in the same manner, so the two could operate in deep cover in ways a singleton cannot,” I say smoothly, fighting emotion. I've planned this answer, painstakingly thinking it through, knowing it is a worthy argument.

  “Exactly what I said,” Romeo replies, giving Angelica an impossible-to-define look. “It gives The Mission a significant strategic advantage.”

  “She's a nothing. Not worth the investment of resources,” Angelica tosses off.

  I can feel Glen's smile. No one can see it, of course.

  It's not there.

  Not on her face, at least. Her face that is Kina's.

  How can identical twins look so different to me? On the surface, there is no difference.

  Unless you know how to look.

  “If you say so,” I respond, keeping my voice as flat as possible. They're making a huge mistake. My desire for Kina to go out into the world, to get the education she wants, to serve The Mission, has to be hidden. I am merely putting forth an idea right now, holding true to the ideology of our cause.

  Stateless isn't meant to be enacted only here at the compounds where we're raised in various countries.

  It's meant to infiltrate the world.

  Kina is one of the smartest people I have ever met, but Glen has outsmarted her.

  And me.

  “I do,” Angelica says.

  “I don't,” Romeo states. “For the record,” he adds, looking hard at Dr. Svetnu, “I told Angelica long ago that Kina should be assigned to the same mission as Glen. Different schools maybe, intern with different politicians, but the same mission. Twins are a unique asset.”

  “And the leaders decided otherwise,” Angelica says coolly.

  “What will you have her do?” Glen asks, pretending she doesn't know.

  “We have a job that is suitable for her,” is all the doctor will say. His attention is focused more on Romeo than any of us. There is a layer of tension in the air I do not understand. All I know is that I've failed Kina in every way possible.

  I fight to keep my emotions under control.

  Last night showed me that emotions are not a sign of weakness. They are a clear indicator of strength. The leadership is wrong in that regard, but I know it is futile to fight them.

  Instead, I must fight for Kina.

  Glen speaks up, her voice smooth, charming. “I want to thank you, Romeo and Angelica, Smith, and, of course, Dr. Svetnu,” she says with a head bow. “I will dedicate myself to The Mission. I've trained for life in the outside world. I've studied the culture. Steeped myself in their beliefs. Learned what I need to know to foment uncertainty. And I will do whatever it takes to forward our cause.”

  “Last night certainly proved that,” I say.

  She wasn't expecting that. A slight blink, not quite completed, pulled back at the last second before her eyelids touch, is all she gives. “Thank you. Your work was commendable as well.”

  “I couldn't have done it without help.”

  She bristles.

  “You two make such a good team,” Smith says, looking at a folder. “It is a shame to separate you.”

  I can feel the spot on my neck where Glen would slice me if she could.

  “After university we can reassess. Perhaps their paths will converge,” Dr. Svetnu says.

  I clear my throat, all eyes on me as I try one last time.

  “If Kina is trained like Glen, then– ”

  Glen's fingers, the nails still darkened with blood around the edges, land on my forearm.

  “I already told them, Callum. Kina doesn't want to go to university.”

  “What?”

  “I told them. What she's said for years. She likes it here. Or maybe a quiet position working with child
ren out in The Field, but nothing like what we do. That's what Kina wants.”

  “No, it's not!” I insist, instantly realizing my error. She's drawn me out, made me express emotion in front of our leaders. If I weren't one of the victors from last night, and if they didn't think it was me who killed Jason, I would have my orders for The Field rescinded immediately and be sent for a week of Woods.

  “You've spoken to her about her wishes?” Romeo asks.

  “I drew her out,” I say calmly. “She's easy to charm.”

  Glen's eyes light up. “You've been playing her?”

  A stare is all she gets from me.

  Romeo taps his pen against the black leather portfolio before him. Three taps, then he leans in and says, “Nothing out there is what you imagine it to be.”

  Glen's smirk freezes.

  “You will go into The Field and meet new people. Smell new scents. Be disgusted by breathtaking selfishness and be awed by insipid generosity from fools too naïve to know the difference between altruism and abuse. You sit here before us after taking someone's life last night, your crisp suits and your cold minds proof that your training these last fourteen years has gone as planned.”

  I see Glen catch it, too.

  Fourteen?

  I'm eighteen.

  “We didn't think you had it in you. I was brought in as well. Not born to it,” Romeo snaps.

  Glen turns a sickly shade of light green. She didn't know? I suspected, but it's clear she swallowed the leaders' stories about her and Kina being brought in at birth.

  “I was in the first class, you know,” Romeo says. “There were only two of us. There was no test then.”

  Lucky you, I think.

  “But my fellow classmate hated me. I had skills he lacked. One night, he picked a fight. I killed him with my bare hands. Svetnu happened to see it. No one stopped us. No one broke us up. I realized I had complete power in that moment. That it was a true test. My classmate died because he let jealousy get the better of him. His emotions made him impulsive. And Svetnu developed The Test in later years.” He gives us a closed-mouth smile. “And now we have a class of twenty-four.”